


What's Enough?

by TooCreative4Life



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Confessions, Fluff and Angst, Getting Together, Hurt Liam, Hurts So Good, Love Confessions, M/M, Originally Posted on Tumblr, Theo Raeken Needs a Hug, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-21
Updated: 2021-01-21
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:21:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28894329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TooCreative4Life/pseuds/TooCreative4Life
Summary: Liam and Theo were taken by surprise when a lone, starved wendigo attacked them in the Preserve. During the struggle, Theo is incapacitated while the creature goes after Liam. Both are only saved thanks to the sheer luck that Parrish was close enough to hear the commotion and arrive in time. As close as he was to telling Liam how he felt in the woods, Theo's ready to book it out of Beacon Hills for good, realizing that he'll never be enough to keep the wolf safe.
Relationships: Liam Dunbar/Theo Raeken
Comments: 5
Kudos: 53





	What's Enough?

**Author's Note:**

> Check out my Tumblr to stay up-to-date on my smaller Thiam and Steo content, as well as get mini sneak-peaks at Tough Like Dandelions as I work my way through writing it.   
> @equallyloyalandlethal

The air around Theo thickened as he stepped back from the hospital bed, hands curling into white-knuckled fists at his side. He hated being here. Everything was clinically sterile, but the sharpsmell and fear that couldn’t be washed out or masked just due to the sheer volume saturating every inch of the building.

“I’m—I’m sorry. I'm not who you need,” he said, shaking his head again.

This whole situation was his fault. He knew it, and so did everyone else. Everyone except Liam. Stupid, infuriating, forgiving Liam who rivaled Scott’s tendency for seeing the better side of people. This should have finally woken Liam up enough for the wolf to tell him to fuck off and put the kibosh on whatever this _thing_ was between them. Unfortunately, he overestimated the level of rationality he was capable of. That and and Liam’s engrained stubbornness far exceeded what Theo could talk around with the state his animals were in.

The coyote was still screaming for blood, itching to track down the idiot who landed the blows and rend him limb from limb, while his wolf wanted nothing more than to plant himself next to Liam and not move again. They were ripping him in two in a way he hadn’t felt for a long time. Merging their desires wasn’t hard, most of the time. Survival was the coyote’s main instinct, which was easy enough to twist around when he needed to. The wolf was harder. Those instincts screamed about pack and connection louder than anything else. Before he was thrown in Hell he could manipulate it well enough. But since then…

He huffed, dreaded the moment both of them got on the same page, what with his self-control reserves at an all time low.

"But you're who I want. Isn't that enough?” Liam’s question was so quiet, he wouldn’t have thought he had said it at all if he wasn’t in the room.

He shrank back a step, turning his head away as his eyes started to prickle. Where was the chimera that murdered his friends without a care, who schemed his way into a pack by breaking up a lifelong friendship? Hot tears gathered at the corner of his eyes, damn near burning his skin the longer he let them sit there. Wiping them away would mean acknowledging them, which he was not about to do. He had a reputation to maintain.

“Theo scrunched his face, hating the sharp sournessleeching into Liam’s scent, his chest clenched, like a vise-grip was tightening around, knowing he caused the hurt. “Besides, it’s not like I ever really belonged here anyway.”

“Wait.” Liam sat up so abruptly Theo cringed internally at the thought of how the stitches had to have pulled. “You’re leaving?”

The way his voice nearly broke, straining to get the words out before the pain and fear overtook the ability, made Theo flinch. This was supposed to keep Liam from being hurt, not make it worse. _It’s all I’m good at,_ he grumped to himself, teeth grinding. It didn’t matter how much he changed in Hell, he would never be good or even good enough. Failure was the name of his game, and there was no changing it.

“Yes,” he said as he forced his head to turn and lifted his eyes.

Regret zinged through him as Liam met his gaze. Instead of the rough, volatile anger he was ready to battle against, he found soft brows and pained, glassy eyes. He took a breath to steady himself, only to be gut-punched by the sharp tang of Liam’s pain.

Tears rolled down both their cheeks.

“Theo, please—”

“You almost died because I’m a freak of nature, because I couldn’t step up, because I—” He grimaced as words caught in his throat, hating how it let him think about the words that nearly flew out of him.

Silence stretched between them, grating at his nerves more than the tears he couldn’t stop. His wolf and coyote were howling in unison, damn near screaming their want for the human version of sunshine laying in the hospital bed. He couldn’t listen to them, not this time, not after the woods.

“The best thing I can do is leave,” he said, turning to the door.

“That’s absolute bullshit,” Liam snapped, the growl in his words making Theo stop and look back at him. “You’re afraid and you’re running the other direction, just like with the Ghost Riders.”

He bit at the inside of his lips, trying to stop himself from back sliding the small distance he had managed to put between them. The hurt puppy-dog eyes Liam was giving him were decidedly not helping his resolve in the slightest.

“You put on a brave face, convincing everyone you’re happy on your own, but the truth is you’re terrified of _any_ emotional connection.” Liam paused as he swung his legs over the side of the bed, wincing and letting out a near inaudible squeak.

“Get back in bed before Melissa tranqs you.” Theo meant to say it as a threat, but the awkward tightness in his throat made it sound more like he was pleading.

As usual, Liam threw caution to the wind, white-knuckling the bed as he stood, never dropping his eyes from Theo’s. “Do you even know what love feels like?”

He couldn’t stop the snarl that ripped from him as his eyes flashed gold. Of course he knew! That’s why this whole mess was killing him. If he didn’t, nothing would have changed. Everything he was now started with that stupid emotion.

“When would I have had the chance to learn about it, huh? Between _them_ shoving needles in my arms and opening my chest over and over and over again? When they praised my initiative for tearing out a failing chimera’s throat for the first time with no prompting? After I lied to yet another kid they conned into their clutches and told them it’d all be okay, despite the stench of death leaking out along with their black blood?”

His heart tightened at the memory of the sweet little girl, too young and innocent for such a wretched end. It was the only time his sister’s heart roared to life in all his years with the Doctors. She was so gentle. Too much so.

A roaring snarl ripped out of Theo as he shoved away her last moments, ignoring how his scar burned where her tiny fingers had grazed the skin. “I think I’m in love with you, but I’m not good enough. I never will be,” he said, turning away again. “And that sc—” He stumbled over the word, grinding his teeth, fighting against finishing the sentence. “It terrifies me, okay? It makes me shit bricks every time you go near a fight and paralyzes me when I think about losing you because I don’t want to go back to classic Theo but I don’t know how else I’d survive without you.”

For a moment he stood there, frozen. Those words had barely been given shape as thoughts. They weren’t supposed to leap out so readily! He shrank back, arms cinched across his chest like he could hold himself together through sheer force of will as he fought against his shoulders rolling forward.

He jerked back, claws and fangs dropping in a blink, as something touched his cheek. Luckily his head caught up in time to not rip through the already injured Liam standing right in front of him. Right in front, less than an arm’s length between them, with a soft smile he only ever saw once directed at someone that was definitely not him.

“Li—”

“No talking. Just listen, okay?” Liam moved his thumb to sit on Theo’s lips, effectively silencing the chimera. “I don’t care what you think of yourself, you’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met. You came back from so much trauma, shit that most people won’t even experience a sliver of in their whole lives, and you’ve been trying to do better every single day since I brought you back. There’s not a person alive, or dead, that I could ever feel safer with or more in love with than you, Theo.”

One second stretched into two, silent except for their erratic heartbeats. For once, his head was as quiet as the room, no instincts screaming at him to act differently. Instead, his inner wolf was damn near purring, overjoyed at the warm hand on his cheek, and the coyote was begrudgingly admitting that it agreed with this turn of events. _Of all the times for you two to agree,_ he huffed, slowly closing his eyes and leaning into Liam’s touch.

Even he couldn’t argue how right it felt, but that didn’t mean his stomach knotted itself any less or the tremors in his hand subsided in the least. Letting positivity in had yet to end well for him or anyone else involved, and Liam was a positive in his life. The most positive thing, actually. The man was sunshine incarnate, just like that stupid princess movie he made them watch the other day. If whoever she was could help a shifty, no-good thief redeem themselves, maybe he could trust his sunshine to do the same.


End file.
